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   Who says that fictions onlyand false hair Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty? Is all good structure in a winding stair?

—Herbert, George

For there isanupstartcrow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

—Greene, Robert

Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough, A flask of wine, a book of verseöand Thou Beside me singing in the wildernessö And wilderness is paradise enow.

—Fitzgerald, Edward

Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame; Who seek, who hope, who love, who live, but thee: Thine eyes my pride, thy lips my history; If thou praise not, all other praise is shame.

—Shute, Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway

   Let simple Wordsworth chime his childish verse, And brother Coleridge lull the babe at nurse.

—Rochdale

Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save That beast imbued with such immortal fire? Could she not live who life eternal gave?

—Rochdale

And no one knows, at first sight, a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy. There's nothing in it.

—Pound, Ezra Loomis

And, by the incarnation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O,Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone, A Page, a Grave, that they can call their own; But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick, On passive paper, or on solid brick.

—Pope, Alexander

Where is the antique glory now become, What whilom wont in women to appear? Where be the brave achievements doen by some? Where be the battles, where the shield and spear, And all the conquests, which them high did rear, That matter made for famous poet's verse, And boastful men so oft abashed to hear? Bene theyall dead, and laid in doleful hearse? Or doen they only sleep, and shall again reverse?

—Spenser, Edmund

You never find an Englishman among the under- dogsöexcept in England, of course.

—Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn

I can scarcely fancy myself to ask a superior to publish a volume of my verse and I own that humanly there is very little likelihood of that ever coming to pass. And to be sure if I chose to look at things on one side and not the other I could of course regret this bitterly. But there is more peace and it isthe holier lot to be unknown than to be known.

—Hopkins, SirAnthony

We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of humannaturesostriking, and sogrotesque, as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stockingöhalf Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison inone pocket, and a quire of bad verses in the other.

—1st Baron

Still is thy name in high account, And still thy verse has charms, Sir David Lindesay of the Mount, Lord Lion King-at-arms!

—Scott, Sir Walter

   Even forms and substances are circumfused By that transparent veil with light divine, And, through the turnings intricate of verse, Present themselves as objects recognised, In flashes, and with glory not their own.

—Wordsworth,William

Will there never come a season Which shall rid us of the curse Of a prose which knows no reason And an unmelodious verse† When there stands a muzzled stripling, Mute, beside a muzzled bore: When the Rudyards cease from kipling And the Haggards Ride no more.

—Stephen,J(ames) K(enneth)

   And this unpolished rugged verse I chose As fittest for discourse and nearest prose.

—Dryden,John

   My celestial patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse: Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late.

—Milton,John

   Loving in truth, and vain in verse my love to show, That she (dear she) mighttake some pleasure of my pain, Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know; Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.

—Shute, Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway

WhenTime shall turn those amber locks to grey, My verse again shall gild and make them gay.

—Drayton, Michael

Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure EŁ  parse au vent crispe¤   du matin Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym. Et tout le reste est litte¤  rature. May your verse be a glorious adventure Strewn by the crisp morning air Which helps the mint and the thyme grow. Everything else is mere literature.

—Verlaine, Paul

Past ruined Ilion Helen lives, Alcestis rises from the shades; Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives Immortal youth to mortal maids.

—Landor,Walter Savage

Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols.

—Donne,John

A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech.

—Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

Le vers est la forme optique de la pense¤  e.Voila'   pourquoi il convient surtout a'   la perspective sce¤  nique. Verse is the optical form of thought. That is the reason a scenic perspective suits it.

—Hugo,Victor Marie

   My verse represents a handle I can grasp in order not to yield to the centrifugal forces which are trying to throw me off the world.

—Nash, (Frederic) Ogden

Verse thus design'd has no ill fate, If it arrive but at the date Of fading beauty, if it prove But as long-liv'd as present love.

—Waller, Edmund

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

Nothing whips my blood like verse.

—Williams,William Carlos

Un poe'  te C'est un e"  tre unique ' A des tas d'exemplaires Qui ne pense qu'en vers Et n'e¤  crit qu'en musique Sur des sujets divers Des rouges ou des verts Mais toujours magnifiques. A poet Is a unique being From an exemplary multitude Who only thinks in verse And only writes in music On diverse subjects Reds and greens But always magnificently. 880

—Vian, Boris

   Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

—Frost, Robert Lee

Where we such clusters had, As made us nobly wild, not mad; And yet each verse of thine Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.

—Herrick, Robert